Image: The dictator’s face and quotes are often used on merchandise like mouse pads and coastersThe dictator’s face and quotes are often used on merchandise like mouse pads and coasters

From coffee mugs and laptop cases to ice cream and artwork, everything sells in the Fuhrer’s name in India

Last month, a Delhi-based publisher grabbed headlines when it released a children’s book titled Great Leaders, and put Adolf Hitler on the cover. Last week, BJP leader Chandra Kumar Bose, who is also the grandnephew of Subhas Chandra Bose, pitted Jawaharlal Nehru against the Nazi leader and declared Nehru a traitor and Hitler a “nationalist who never betrayed his nation”.

Clearly, the man much of the world views as a monster isn’t as reviled in India. In fact, Hitler is big here. His 1925 autobiography, Mein Kampf, has been a bestseller since it was first published here in 1928. Indian management students scour it for leadership lessons, Slideshare has presentations and Quora features questions on it. But that’s not all.

An ice cream brand in north India is called Hitler. A Mumbai café and an Ahmedabad apparel store were also named after him, though bad press led to a name change. Hitler’s name sells scores of products on e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Flipkart — coffee mugs, Swastika and Hitler posters, laptop casings, motorcycle helmets like the Stahlhelm worn by Hitler’s troops, T-shirts, cardigans, coasters, spikebusters, extension cords, locks, iPhone covers, jewellery boxes, lamp stands…

Colorpur, an online platform for designer artworks, has three types of Hitler merchandise. Its COO Abhinav Singh says: “We are just a platform, we don’t design anything ourselves. And we don’t make any moralistic judgement unless of course it is absolutely controversial. We don’t tell anyone to create or not to create anything.”

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The Schutzstaffel, better known as the infamous SS, served as Hitler’s bodyguards

Aligarh’s Ishtiaq Ahmed, owner of Hitler Locks Enterprise, says it was the name’s popularity that worked for him. “Back in 1989 when we started the company, there were so many lock makers here. To stand out, we had to find a name that would stand out. Hitler was the perfect choice. There has been no dictator like Hitler, so nobody can forget that name,” Ahmed says.

But is he aware of Hitler’s misdeeds? “Yes, but we have nothing to do with that,” he says.

In many developed countries, like France and Austria, displaying Nazi memorabilia is a punishable offence. Not in India, where Hitler has always been a fascinating figure. Historians attribute this to ignorance about the Third Reich, and Indians’ physical and emotional disconnect from the Holocaust.

Over the decades, ‘Hitler’ became a soft pejorative used for strict teachers, bosses, even family patriarchs. Romantic soaps showed boyfriends flirtatiously calling their ladylove “Hitler-like”. A TV serial on a rather strict woman was called Hitler Didi, while the all-time superhit Sholay had an overblown caricature of Hitler in the form of a strict jailor. These representations have made Hitler more acceptable, even cute, in India.

Image: hitler-car-4col
Spotted on a car sticker.

Historians say all this isn’t entirely harmless. Prof Anirudh Deshpande of Delhi University says Indians have been influenced by fascism since the 1930s, “especially upper-caste Indians who believe they are Aryan cousins of the Germans”. In India, the anti-Semitism of Germany was replaced with the anti-Muslim and anti-Christian prejudices of the RSS. “Compared with Britain or the US, India is a new nation state with multiple problems. Insecure people who internalise a feeling of having been historically wronged are vulnerable to fascism,” he says.

Despande says most Indians admire Hitler without knowing much about him. “The average Hitler T-shirt-wearing Indian hasn’t even heard of the Holocaust. The steady failure of the Indian state over the last 30 years has discredited democracy in the country and strengthened the popular appeal of what the Japanese historian Yoshiaki calls ‘grassroots fascism’.”

But the Hitler cult also exists because certain nationalists believe he was great as Bose had allied with him and even raised an Indian army in Germany called Freies Indien Legion.

Historian Benjamin Zachariah says the fantasy of Hindus as Aryans appealed to a lot of upper-caste Indians in the 19th century. “The Nazi model of all organisations under the control of one party and one leader is an appealing one, and the depiction of Hitler as a German patriot serves that purpose,” Zachariah adds.

Historian Dilip Menon has a slightly different take: “In India, we were so thoroughly colonised that our elite looked to European forms, whether democracy or fascism. But fascism is compatible with capitalism, unlike socialist authoritarianism.” Perhaps that’s why it appeals more